


bad communication

by viscrael



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Miscommunication, blue always knows whats up, lance almost dies what else is new, this is just 6k of me being horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9692165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: “Can we, like, stop speaking in code now actually, because I’m not anymore certain than I was two minutes ago that we’re talking about the same thing and I just want to know if you’re saying you like me back or if I just maybe read way too much into this entire conversation and made that part up?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> im horrible this is horrible this entire thing is a Train Wreck but HERE it is anyway
> 
> title from the sufjan stevens song bc honestly when do i ever name my fics after anything but sufjan lyrics, truly. its 1 am on a school night. pls just take this

“Are you fucking insane?!”

Lance’s back slams against the side of Blue, hard, the moment that he falls out of her. There are hands digging into his already bruising shoulders, shaking him. He doesn’t react. The ground blurs, rushes toward him quicker than his heavy limbs can respond. The hands stop hurting him and instead heave him upwards, catching him last moment. He tastes blood in his mouth.

“You’re such an _idiot_ ,” Keith spits. Lance pulls his eyes from the ground with what feels like too much effort, but he keeps his head high enough to look at Keith when he grins. His teeth might be red, or maybe it’s the rest of him that makes Keith’s face pale even worse.

“Nothing you haven’t told me before,” Lance says.

“Shut up.” Hands, slinging his arm over a shoulder, Keith’s shoulder, warm, a stinging in Lance’s side, _pain_. “Just—God, just shut up.”

“Keith—“

“ _Stop talking_. You’re going to make it worse. You’re _making_ it worse.”

Lance tries to pick his feet up as they walk, hobble, to wherever it is Keith thinks he’s taking them, but even that is too much effort. God, he’s tired. His eyelids are so heavy. His limbs are so heavy, his body hurts so much. Has light always stung this badly? The image of his feet nearly limp next to Keith’s as they struggling forward slips into the background, then into darkness altogether. God, he’s tired, tired…

“...Lance? Lance! Don’t you dare pass out right now! Say something!”

“You just told me _not_ to say something,” Lance mumbles. He can’t open his eyes again, though. Too much effort. “You’re...sending me mixed signals here, dude...”

“Alright, I take it back, I don’t want you to shut up until we get to the castle. Lance? Are you listening?”

Keith’s disembodied voice floats somewhere next to Lance, and he registers the question vaguely. He nods—at least, he tries to nod. Doesn’t know if that’s what he accomplished. Everything is so heavy. Every part of him weighs a million tons. His body is so _heavy_. “Yeah. Yeah. ‘m listening.”

“Tell me a story.”

He’s being lowered to the ground somewhere, maybe. It’s hard to tell. Keith’s warmth is gone, and his voice is farther away when he repeats, “Lance, I said tell me a story.”

“‘Bout what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Anything. About—about the Garrison, or, or how beautiful you think Allura is, or, shit, I don’t know, anything.”

“Okay. Once upon time there was a guy named Lance.” He isn’t even sure if he’s saying anything out loud anymore. It’s hard to tell when his lips are moving and when they aren’t, and in the dark, it’s easy for him to want to stop and slip into sleep. “Then he made some stupid decisions and ended up with Keith yelling out of his ass—“

“Don’t finish that,” Keith snaps. He knew Lance was probably going to end that badly. Things _seem_ pretty bad right now. Fuck, everything hurts. Hurts. Way more than anything he’s ever felt. Lance just wants to go to sleep. How long has his head hurt like that?

“Tell me something else, just—we’re almost there. Allura? Coran? Can you hear me? We’re on our way…”

Keith’s voice fades into white noise, a distant hum to the sharp pain shooting through all of Lance’s nerves. He feels Red speaking to him, the way Blue does when she’s calming him down on nights when he falls asleep, curled up in the cockpit. She doesn’t sound the same as Blue, doesn’t feel the same in Lance’s head, but he knows that it’s her. He can make out what she’s saying, faintly, like a buzz in the back of his head.

_Stay awake,_ she’s telling him. She sends him images of Blue—Blue, injured, Blue, waiting for him to come back, Blue, where Keith and Lance had just left her. _Stay awake. Stay awake. She needs you. She needs you._

_I want to stay awake_ , Lance thinks. _But I’m so tired._

_Stay awake,_ she repeats. _Don’t die. Don’t go to sleep. If you go to sleep, you won’t wake up._

_But I will_ , Lance insists. _I’ll wake up. I just want to nap first, I just want to let this pain stop…_

“Lance!”

Red stops speaking to him, and he feels her retreat from his mind as quickly as she’d entered. He blinks his eyes open to see Keith standing over his slumped over body. There are hands on his shoulders, shaking him. How long had Keith been trying to get his attention before he realized?

“I’m awake,” he says. The words come out slurred, and he still tastes copper in his mouth, thicker and more pungent than before. Maybe he bit his tongue in the fight. That would explain why he’s bleeding so much.

“Barely. C’mon, Lance, we’re almost back to the castle, just hold on for a few more minutes before we get there.”

“I’m holding.”

“ _Keep your eyes open_.”

He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. Lance blinks his eyes open again. Keith swims back into vision, fuzzy, haloed in light. He’s staring intently at Lance, like if he looks away even for a second Lance will fall back asleep and never wake up.

Red hums in the back of his mind. _Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. Blue needs you. The team needs you. My paladin needs you._

“I didn’t know your eyes were purple,” Lance says. It’s the first thought in his head that he can translate into words.

Keith frowns. Hands slide up from Lance’s shoulders to his cheeks, cupping them. Warm hands. Warm even through his gloves. “You’re awake enough to make dumb comments at least. That’s improvement.”

“At least ‘s not a pick up line.”

“I’d prefer a pick up line to nothing at this point,” Keith admits quietly. Red keeps talking to Lance in the back of his head, quiet things, things that become more abstract feeling than words or thoughts as the moments pass. The team grieving. Blue grieving. Finding another paladin to pilot Blue; Blue refusing them in her grief. Red comforting Keith. Hunk and Pidge huddled together. His family back on Earth, wondering where their son went. His oldest sister getting married without him there. His parents dying, never knowing what happened to him. An empty space. A hole that won’t be filled, couldn’t be filled.

It’s probably meant to inspire him to stay awake, to keep going. All it does is make his heart hurt along with his whole body.

“It really hurts, Keith,” Lance laughs. Tries to laugh. It comes out like a hiss. He grits his teeth. Keith’s hands move from his cheeks back to his shoulders, then they’re gone again.

“I know. You’re going to be fine. We’re almost there.”

He must have Red on autopilot. Lance glances at the empty pilot’s seat then back at Keith, who’s still sitting kneeled in front of Lance.

“I really didn’t know your eyes are purple, though,” Lance says. Keith wanted him to talk. The image of the team grieving, of his family grieving is still fresh in his mind. He’s going to talk. “I never noticed that. I always—I always thought they were, like…just brown, or something. I didn’t think about it. That’s weird that that’s not something we think about. People’s eye color.”

“You really never noticed?” It sounds less like Keith cares and more like he’s trying to get Lance to keep talking. That’s a first for him. Lance says that, or tries to say it; maybe it comes out incomprehensible. Either way, Keith doesn’t respond to that.

“Never thought to notice. Wish I had. We’ve been part of Voltron for how many months? And I never noticed.”

“It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t care.”

“I do. I should’ve known.”

Keith looks like he’s trying to smile. Red says, _Good, that’s good, you’re staying awake. You’ll be okay._ “We’re almost to the castle.”

“It hurts a fuckton, Keith.”

“I know. We’re gonna get you to a pod, and you’ll get healed. You’ll be okay.”

“That’s the same thing Red told me,” Lance says. It’s the last thing he remembers saying before his eyes really _do_ slip shut, and he can’t force them open again this time, no matter how many times Keith calls for him.

 

\--

 

“You’re an idiot.”

Lance grins, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah, that one I guess I kind of deserved. But to be fair, it’s not like I was _trying_ to get hurt or pass out—“

“It sure didn’t look like that to me,” Keith says. He’s not yelling, but he’s got that air about him that means it’s worse than when he _is_ yelling. He’s angry, really angry, which Lance guesses makes sense, considering the circumstances.

But still! It really wasn’t Lance’s intention to get hurt that badly. He’d only been trying to help. The mission had just…gone differently than expected. They were supposed to be going on a supply run for Allura on a nearby planet, they weren’t expecting to run into Galra soldiers. Things had gotten out of hand quicker than either of them could respond, but what else was Lance supposed to do when Keith was clearly being overwhelmed? Just sit there and let him get hurt?

“You should’ve told me the second you got injured,” Keith reprimands. He’s made that point maybe a billion times in the past few minutes. Annoyingly enough, it’s a valid one.

“I didn’t realize it was _that_ bad,” Lance mumbles defensively.

Keith snorts, crossing his arms over his chest. “Obviously not. ‘That bad’ my ass. You were in the healing pod for a week! How could you have just ‘not noticed’ that you were practically bleeding out, with four broken ribs and a broken leg? Not to mention the internal bleeding—”

“It was a stupid mistake, okay? I admit it! I’m sorry!” Lance throws his hands in the air exasperatedly. “Now can you stop being pissed off at me and just be happy that everything ended up okay?”

“Barely making it out of there alive does _not_ equal ‘everything ending up okay’, Lance!”

“I still made it! I’m still here for you to yell at for absolutely no other reason than to be pissed off about something!”

Keith actually looks taken aback by that one. He doesn’t respond. They only stand there, staring each other down in the training deck, pissed off about something that they probably shouldn’t even be pissed off about.

Lance doesn’t want them to be fighting. He wants to be happy that he’s alive, and he wants to go back to things being sort of okay with his sort of friend Keith, and he wants to forget that near death experience altogether, the way he’s been trying to with all the others. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation at all, but Keith had ignored and avoided him for the first twenty-four hours after he finally got out from the healing pod, and when he finally chased Keith down to find out what was up, he was going at the training bot with more barely contained fury than Lance had seen in a long time.

Apparently, that was aimed at Lance, and apparently because he’d made some dumb decisions during their mission. It was a fair criticism, and he could admit that he needs to work on his decision making skills in the heat of the moment, but for Keith to be so _angry?_ Over _this_?

Keith’s still breathing heavily from his rounds with the training bot. He deactivates his bayard, shrinking it back down to its normal size, and turns his back to Lance.

“Just forget it,” he says as he leaves the training deck. He doesn’t turn around once, and Lance doesn’t call for him to come back. He only stands there, watching Keith leave and feeling like he just missed something important.

 

\--

 

“Hey, Blue.”

Blue purrs in greeting when Lance gets into the hangar. He smiles softly and stands, leaning back to look at her with his hands in his pockets. She’s been repaired already, and she’s in perfect shape again. It’s like their impromptu run in with the Galra soldiers had never happened. Lance would be on his way to completely forgetting about it—if it weren’t for the thing with Keith…

She feels the direction his thoughts are turning to. Her purrs get louder, like she’s trying to drown out the unpleasant thoughts, and he smiles wider. He loves Blue, loves her a lot. Lance boasts sometimes about how he has the strongest bond with his lion, and he knows the others don’t really take him seriously when he says that, but he really does think theirs is the strongest. There’s a feeling of completion he gets when he’s with her, one he doesn’t think he’s ever felt with anybody or anything else, and they’re so in sync sometimes that it freaks him out.

_You’re troubled,_ she says to him. She’s still purring, but behind the words she sends to him. He shrugs and moves across the hangar to her. Without request, she opens her jaw to allow him inside, and he finds his familiar place in the flight deck.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” he assures her. “Just Keith being a moody asshole again, but what else is new, am I right?” He laughs, but it feels forced and insincere even to him. She doesn’t say anything, but her silence lets him know that she agrees with him: it’s insincere.

_Do the Red paladin’s emotions upset you?_ she asks.

“What, like, in general?” He sits down in the pilot’s seat, making himself comfortable. “I mean, I guess not. He’s always super moody, but I was sort of getting used to it, you know? Since we started becoming friends and stuff. Bonding. Whatever. I guess I thought I could tell what it actually meant when he was pissed off and when he was being distant, you know.” Lance frowns. “But apparently not anymore. I don’t get what he’s so angry about now, and that’s the part that’s…”

_Upsetting you?_

“It’s not _upsetting_ me,” he insists. “It’s just…bothering me. And confusing me. And making me second guess myself.”

_Upsetting you._

“Alright, yeah, yeah, I guess that’s what it sounds like. Whatever. It upsets me. He’s pissed off because of the stunt I pulled the other day, you know, but he’s acting way weirder about it than normal, and he won’t let it go this time. Usually he lets up after a few days, but he had a _week_ before I woke up to get over it, and it’s been three days since I got out of the healing pod and he _still_ won’t talk to me.”

_The Red paladin was distressed by your injuries_ , Blue tells him.

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t explain why he’s so freaking pissed.”

_He did not want you sacrificing yourself for him the way that you did._

Lance frowns again. “…I mean…I guess so. I wouldn’t want him sacrificing himself for me either, but I don’t think that I’d be so angry with him afterwards that I wouldn’t even be able to look at him. I get what you’re saying, Blue, and they’re valid points, but it still doesn’t explain why he’s being such a jerk about the whole thing, especially since it all ended up fine in the end anyway. He’s not permanently hurt, I’m not permanently hurt, and we got what we needed on the mission. What’s the big deal?”

She hums, although for her it ends up more like a thoughtful purr. For a few moments, she doesn’t offer any more explanations, and Lance pulls his knees up to his chest where he’s sitting in the pilot’s seat, wrapping his arms around his knees and leaning his head back.

“I just want to be happy that I’m alive,” he tells her softly. “Is that too much to ask?”

_No, it is not_.

“Glad someone’s on my side.” He smiles.

_Have you considered that maybe the Red paladin’s anger is misdirected?_

“His anger’s, like, _always_ misdirected,” Lance says, “but I’ll bite. What do you mean?”

_Perhaps he is not angry because_ _of what you did, but rather because of what it would mean had you not survived. Perhaps he was scared, and therefore angry that you made him scared for you._

He looks up at the ceiling, his lips turned down thoughtfully. Blue waits patiently for him to internalize that suggestion, not prodding or offering anything more. “You’re saying he’s angry because he would’ve cared if I’d died?”

She purrs again and reaches out as if to caress his mind comfortingly, like rewarding him for getting her point so quickly.

“That’s a pretty crappy way to let someone know you care about them, in that case,” Lance says.

The lions can’t laugh, but a feeling enters Lance’s mind like she’s trying to, and he smiles with her.

_Speak with him_ , she tells him gently. _Fix this. It is only a miscommunication._

“As much as I’d rather do literally anything else right now,” Lance sighs, “you always give the best advice, Blue. So, just ‘cause it’s you, fine, I’ll go. But don’t be surprised if this goes horribly wrong and I come back even more upset than before.”

_I will be prepared for that scenario,_ she seems to laugh into his mind.

 

\--

 

The moment Keith realizes it’s Lance at his door, he says, “No,” and starts to close it again.

Lance shoves his foot in the doorway so it can’t close on him. “Hold on! I just wanted to talk to you!”

“I’m not in the mood, Lance.” Keith says his name the way he’d said it months ago, back when they still couldn’t stand each other, back before they’d grown into their roles as paladins, before they were friends, before they cared about each other. It frustrates Lance, hearing that in Keith’s voice again, directed at him—and maybe hurts him a little bit, too, somewhere he’s not willing to admit.

“C’mon, it’s nothing bad,” Lance insists. He stays in the doorway, and Keith isn’t looking at him, turned away from the threshold with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s defiantly avoiding Lance’s eye.

For a moment, Keith doesn’t say anything. Lance waits to get kicked out of the room or for Keith to go off on him again about how he’s not in the mood, but Keith only sighs, his shoulders deflating, and glances back at Lance quickly.

“Fine. What?”

“Can I come in?”

“You can talk out here.”

Lance frowns. “You’re really not making this any easier here for me, buddy.”

Keith pauses. He uncrosses his arms, crosses them again, and uncrosses them a second time before finally letting his arms hang at his sides. “Fine, you can come in.” He steps away from the threshold, and Lance lets the door shut behind him before Keith can change his mind.

With the possibility of being overheard out of the way, Lance takes a deep breath. “So, you’re obviously still angry at me for what happened.”

Keith doesn’t say anything, only watching Lance from a few feet away. There’s too much space between them, space that he obviously put there intentionally—and like the way he’d pronounced Lance’s name, that hurts somewhere, too. Lance takes a step forward hesitantly, and when Keith doesn’t back away, continues, “I don’t really know what else to do besides apologize again, since there’s not really much I _can_ do. It was a dick move of me to almost die on you, I get that, and I really am sorry for being…” He gestures vaguely. “Reckless.”

“…Alright,” Keith says slowly.

Lance perks up. “Does that mean you forgive me? You accept my apology finally?”

Keith shrugs, eyes trained on a spot somewhere to the left of Lance’s face, still not making eye contact. “I guess. I can’t stay angry at you forever.”

“Oh, god bless.” Lance claps his hands together as if praying. “I _really_ didn’t know how long you were gonna keep that up, ‘cause holy shit, dude, you’re _stubborn_.”

“I can still take it back—“

“No, no, no, I’m just kidding!” Lance rushes to assure, but when Keith finally meets his eyes, he’s obviously fighting a grin. The corners of his eyes crinkle with a smile, and Lance finds that he likes that look much better on Keith than the permanent scowl he’s worn for the past few days. Lance gapes as if offended, a hand coming up to press against his heart. “You’re seriously gonna mess with me right now, after I poured my heart and soul into that apology? Cruel, Keith.”

Keith rolls his eyes. He’s still phantom-grinning. For some reason, Lance remembers, in the back of his mind, what Red had said to him while he was struggling to stay conscious. About her paladin still needing him. There’s something about that phantom-grin that makes Lance itch to bring it up.

Lance moves across the room and to Keith’s bunk bed. Keith watches him do it but doesn’t tell him to stop or get off, and Lance takes that as permission; he leans back on the bed, arms behind his head, making himself comfortable.

“So, we’re cool now? No more of you ignoring me or glaring at me across the table at meals?”

“I wasn’t glaring at you,” Keith says. He hovers near the bed, not sitting down, like he isn’t quite sure if he’s allowed to with Lance already there.

“You totally were. Everyone could tell, too. Even Coran didn’t want to stay in the same room with us for more than five minutes.”

“Is that why he kept coming up with weird excuses?”

Lance laughs. “I’m surprise you didn’t pick up on that earlier.” And because Keith looks like he’s in a better mood now, and because he’s almost-sort-of-gently-smiling with lips upturned softly and dimples exposed, Lance asks, “Why were you so angry at me? Like, the real reason.”

That’s the wrong thing to say. Keith’s smile drops abruptly, and for a moment his frown is back before he schools his expression into something deceptively neutral. Closed off. It only took a quick, honest question for him to shut down.

Lance sits up now that this serious atmosphere is back again. “Blue said something about how your anger was just misdirected. That you weren’t so much angry because I’d been reckless, but more because of what could’ve happened. And Red said something kind of similar, when I was hurt.”

Keith looks at him. “Red talked to you?”

“A little.” Lance shrugs. “Just telling me to stay awake, mostly.”

“What’d she say? …About me, I mean.”

“Her exact words were, ‘my paladin needs you.’” Lance watches Keith’s expression as he pronounces the words, letting the quote fall out of his mouth easily. He tries to pick apart Keith’s reaction, the slight widening of his eyes and the way his face heats up before he set his expression back into impassiveness. Only the lingering color on his cheeks gives anything away.

“Blue said that I needed to talk to you about it,” Lance continues. “That it’s just a miscommunication. Which I can believe. We’re not known for our communication skills.”

“I’m surprised you can admit that,” Keith mumbles.

Lance shrugs. “We both need to work on. It’s easier that it’s not just my fault. So…were either of them right? Or do I need to go back to Blue to tell her she’s got you all wrong?”

“You talk about me with your lion,” Keith says instead of answering the question. He pushes hair behind his ear anxiously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. It looks like he wants to sit down. Lance notices this and scoots over on the bed, offering the spot next to him.

After a moment of hesitation, Keith takes it. He leans back against the wall; there are a few inches between his and Lance’s shoulders, but not nearly enough. Keith crosses his arms over his chest and looks like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible.

“Not on purpose,” Lance corrects. “And not all of the time. She just always knows when I’m upset about something, and there’s no way I can avoid talking about something with her. She’s too good at getting it out of me.”

“It’s not like it’s that hard to get you to talk,” Keith says. Lance nudges Keith’s shoulder with his own, trying to lighten the mood again. “Except for when you need to, if the other day is anything to go by.”

“I talked eventually, didn’t I?”

“Just about my eye color.”

Lance smiles. “It was a pretty important topic at the time. I’m still shocked I didn’t notice sooner.”

Had he died, that would’ve been the last thing he saw, he realizes. It’s a weird thought to have. Keith’s profile is turned to him where they sit together on the bed, and he looks at those eyes now; they’re dark purple, pupils almost swallowed by the irises in this lighting. Lance wonders vaguely if the color has anything to do with Keith being part Galra, or if that’s a wrong assumption to make. He doesn’t want to ask, and he doesn’t think Keith would know even if he did.

“It’s not weird to care about me, you know,” Lance says, instead of what he’d been thinking. “We’re friends. I mean, _I’d_ care if you got hurt.” Or, God forbid, died. Even thinking about it gives Lance a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach, opens up fears he doesn’t want to prod if he doesn’t have to.

“You’d care if anyone got hurt,” Keith mutters. The way he says it, almost bitterly like it’s an issue, makes Lance tense.

“I mean—yeah, of course I would? Is there something wrong with that?”

“No.” He seems to deflate. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant. There’s nothing wrong with caring about people.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I just meant…” There’s a pause. Keith pops his knuckles; his knees come up on the bed, pulled up to his chest, and his shoulder brushes against Lance’s when he moves. He glares at the bedspread like it’s the cause of all of his problems and huffs. “Why does talking about this have to be so stupidly _difficult_?”

“I don’t know. Things would definitely be easier if we could communicate like we do with our lions, though. Just send each other the image we’re seeing or wanna see and get it across that way.” Lance doesn’t even really have issues communicating, not the way that Keith does, and even he agrees that this is unnecessarily hard to talk about. It shouldn’t be. He wonders what image Keith would send him now, if they could talk about it that way, what feelings he’d try to convey instead of words.

Keith stays quiet and doesn’t try to voice his thoughts again for a long moment. They seem to be at a standstill, suspended between Keith’s uncertainty in what he wants to say and the need to say it, a disconnect somewhere that’s making Lance fidget for a reason he can’t quite grasp. It runs deeper than what they’re talking about on the surface. Lance is anxious to find out what’s underneath, anxious and a little frightened.  

Quietly, he offers, “When I talked to her, Blue said that you were angry because you would’ve cared if I died. That you were angry because I scared you. Is that…I mean, is that what it is?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Keith groans, burying his face in his hands.

“Oh.” Lance blinks. “Then what are you all worked up about?”

“What do you mean—“ Keith doesn’t take his face out from behind his hands, but he elbows Lance in the side, ignoring the yelp it causes. “What do you mean what am I worked up about? It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Lance insists. “I already told you I would have felt the same way if you had done what I did.”

“But it’s not the _same_.”

“How come?”

“Because you would’ve felt that way if _anyone_ had nearly died! It’s the same for everybody you’re with! You care about them, and that’s not—that’s not a bad thing or anything, but it’s different than what it is with me…”

Keith’s voice gets quieter the longer he speaks until he’s trailing off at the end, and his silence leaves something in its wake. He seems to bury his face deeper in his hands. Lance thinks he can see the tips of his ears turning red, what isn’t covered by his hair.

“Not to burst your bubble or anything,” Lance says, “but you’re kind of assuming something that’s not true.”

“What, that you would care?”

“God, no, of course not—that’s a given, of course I would care. But you’re having this whole freak out thing under the assumption that it’s different than it is with me than it is with you, and you just—I don’t—“ Lance waves his hands around wildly as if that’ll help him find the words. “That’s just—you know—not true.”

Keith stills, then peaks out from behind his hands. It’s unbearably endearing, even when he’d just been all but yelling at Lance only seconds ago. “…What are you talking about?” he says slowly, suspiciously.

Lance sits up further on the bed; it jostles both of them, and he brushes against Keith as he gets resituated. “You’re saying that the reason it’s stupid is because I wouldn’t be the same way, but…I mean, it hasn’t happened, but I think, based off what you said, that it _would_ be the same. For me too.”

“It would be same,” Keith repeats.

“Yeah.”

“…We’re on the same page?”

Lance hesitates. “Well, I was certain we were on the same page up until you said that, but now I’m second-guessing that I actually know what’s going on, so…”

Keith lets his hands fall away from his face completely. He’s still pink in the cheeks but not nearly as red as he was earlier, and his hands rest idly in his lap. Lance watches the way Keith fidgets, playing with his fingers and trying to pop his knuckles out of nervous habit, despite having already popped them.

“You know what it meant when…when Red said that,” Keith says. “You know what she meant by…”

“By her paladin needing me?”

There’s the blush again. Lance doesn’t mind its reappearance. Like the hiding, it’s charming. Keith nods once, stiffly. Lance nods too.

“And it’s…the same for you, you said,” Keith says. He pronounces each word deliberately, as if talking to a child.

“…Yeah?” Lance says it like a question on accident.

“Then…then I think we’re…?”

Before he can say anything else, Lance blurts, “Can we, like, stop speaking in code now actually, because I’m not anymore certain than I was two minutes ago that we’re talking about the same thing and I just want to know if you’re saying you like me back or if I just maybe read way too much into this entire conversation and made that part up?”

Keith blinks at him, surprised by the outburst, and the split second without a reaction feels like hours to Lance’s nerves. But then Keith is laughing, and it’s sudden and genuine and much more tangible than his phantom-smiles, and Lance watches him in awe until he dissolves into laughter too, realizing for the first time the absurdity of the whole situation.

“ _Yes_ , Lance,” Keith says, smiling widely. He leans his weight against Lance’s side, their shoulders pressed together, his body inexplicably warm. The way he says Lance’s name is fond. “That’s what I was _trying_ to say.”

Lance relaxes, letting out a whole-body sigh in relief, and leans against Keith in turn. “Holy shit, dude, that was so much more complicated than it needed to be. You’re saying I could’ve just sat there and flat out told you I’ve had a giant crush on you for forever now and we would’ve avoided that entire train wreck?”

“In theory,” Keith says into his shoulder. Lance can feel him smiling still.

“Jesus. Jesus Christ, we’re actually horrible.”

Keith laughs, nodding his agreement. “What did Blue call it? A ‘miscommunication’?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if even _she_ realized how bad of a mess up that actually was,” Lance laughs. “Dude, I thought you hated me. I thought that me fucking up had taken us all the way back to square one.”

He says it with fondness now, as if it wasn’t a daunting, terrifyingly plausible idea only an hour ago, grinning at how stupid the assumption had been now that he actually knows.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” Keith says.

“Liar.” The accusation is said lightly, though, and Lance is smiling. “You are _not_ subtle when you’re angry at someone.”

“I just wanted you to know I was mad, even though it wasn’t even you I was mad at.” Keith pauses. When Lance looks at him, his smile is replaced with a small, thoughtful frown—not angry, just thinking.

“You were angry because I scared you. I get it,” Lance assures.

Keith doesn’t say anything, and Lance feels that he’s being watched even before he catches Keith’s eye in his peripheral. When he turns to face Keith, Keith’s still wearing that deep frown—not aimed at anybody, but still a frown.

Without thinking about it, Lance reaches over and smooths down the lines at the corner of Keith’s mouth, pressing in the tips of his fingers gently. Keith lets him do it, and there’s no way he doesn’t catch the way Lance’s eyes linger on his lips even when Lance’s hands have stilled and fallen away. Because they’ve had too many misadventures with communication today already, Lance outright asks, “Can I kiss you?”

He feels the way Keith’s whole body tenses up at the question, the reflexive hitch in his breath in surprise. The breath is released slowly, and at the same time, Keith nods, once, twice, a third time—quicker as he goes, as if Lance will change his mind if he doesn’t answer soon enough. Lance doesn’t think it’s possible for him to change his mind, but he doesn’t say that.

Keith is tense, still, when Lance leans in and presses their lips together, but it’s only a moment before he melts, relaxing his muscles finally, and that’s when it’s nice instead of just foreign. It’s been a long time since Lance has kissed anyone, and he’s rusty, as much as he wouldn’t admit that out loud, and Keith clearly doesn’t know what to do with his hands and he doesn’t know which way to tilt his head, and their noses bump because of it, and their teeth clatter—but even then, the butterflies in Lance’s stomach flutter like crazy, and he feels like he’s fourteen again, like it’s his first kiss instead of his hundredth. Keith did that, he realizes—Keith made him feel like it’s new and exciting and absolutely nerve-wracking again, instead of something Lance has gotten quite a lot of practice with over the years.

“Oh,” Keith says when they part. It’s said quietly, a softer _oh_ than Lance would’ve thought Keith possible of. He looks—a little stunned. When he smiles, it appears slowly, the corners of his lips to his dimples to the corners of his eyes.

“Me too,” Lance agrees. “Can we do that again?”

“ _Yes_.”

 

\--

 

It isn’t until much later, when they’ve had another run in with unexpected threats, when they’ve made it out of another near-death experience and they’re reeling with the what-ifs that always come with barely surviving, that Keith presses a kiss to the back of Lance’s neck and says, “It’s terrifying.”

Lance thinks he knows what Keith is referring to, but he asks anyway, “What is?”

“The thought of losing you.”

He sucks in a breath. Lets it out slowly. Turns around and wraps his arms around Keith, pulling him close.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I know. Me too. God, me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like. this was very rushed and that keith did a 180 super quick but i cant tell if it was ooc or appropriate for the fic or what so. anyway feedback specifically on that wld b [ok sign emoji] (altho feedback in general is always Loved and Appreciated so)


End file.
